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Showing posts from December, 2022

Built to Serve: God’s Design for the Home

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Part 2 of the series: Built by Grace: God's Design for Family and Faith by Bart Denny Walk into almost any home and you can learn a lot just by looking around. Family photos on the wall. A few diplomas. Maybe a trophy case, a military plaque, or — if you're in certain parts of the country — a deer head mounted above the fireplace. But the walls only tell part of the story. The real story is told by the rhythms of a home: what gets talked about most, what creates stress, what gets sacrificed for, and what gets quietly pushed aside. Every home has a center of gravity. Something is pulling it in a certain direction — whether that home is full or quiet, blended or aging, just starting out or starting over. And it's tempting to assume that if we love the Lord, the spiritual direction of our home will simply take care of itself. It won't. You can believe the right things and still let lesser things set the pace. You can want a Christ-centered hom...

Successful Revitalization of Small Evangelical Churches Hinges on Leadership Development

My doctoral dissertation, focused on how successful church revitalization pastors act to develop and empower next-generation leaders. A Phenomenological Study of Pastoral Leadership Development Behaviors in the Revitalization of Small Evangelical Churche s Available at https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/4002 Abstract Church revitalization has received renewed interest in the last several years. Rainer (2014) says that a congregation’s failure to develop and empower next-generation leaders is one of the leading contributors to church closure. Likewise, Clifton (2016) and Stetzer (2007) highlight the importance of developing next-generation leaders during church revitalization.  The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand the leadership development behaviors of senior or solo pastors who successfully led revitalization in a small evangelical church. This study defined a small church as one averaging 65 or fewer in attendance at the beginning of the past...